Yesterday was a busy day in the world of Social Media thanks to Skittles relaunching their main site using Twitter as the key content driver. Mashable was one of the first to break the news via Friend Feed and followed up with a more detailed view a few hours later.
Where once was corporate PR masquerading as cool, hip brand now we are greeted with real time search listing for 'Tweets' that mention the word 'Skittles' combined with a delightfully frustrating navigation 'widget' that sits permanently in the top left of the screen allowing users to jump to other skittle specific social media channels on Myspace, Youtube and Flickr.
Strategically, this is a very brave and interesting approach. Brave because, by the very act of using a service like Twitter, which has no editing control other than an individual's own personal morals, for content means there is a strong risk of inappropriate content ending up on the page. In fact, this has been a key topic amongst a number of Social media watchers, though arguably Skittles have entered this with their eyes wide open given the need to 'prove' you are 18 before you are allowed access to the site.
And interesting because, in the world of FMCG's, recency of message and being front of mind are key to driving that all important impulse purchase. Prior to the relaunch, Skittles was a non-existent 'hashtag' but leapt yesterday into the Top 3 most used tags in Twitter so it would appear that this is something that people, well the Twitterverse and Blogosphere at least, want to talk about. Skittles are no doubt hoping to drive widespread word of mouth and ensure they attain a more continuous front of mind position without having to spend vast budget on a continuous advertising campaign. Scobleizer took this view when he replied on twitter to a question bout whether this would translate into sales saying 'Wrong question @afairfield (she wondered if it would translate into sales). Of course it will. Skittles is now THE candy for the Twitterers.' At the very least, I'd agree that there are likely to be very few Twitter users who haven't had Skittles on their mind at some point in the last 24 hours and a few may even have succumbed to purchase.
The biggest challenge for Skittles is going to be maintaining traffic volumes beyond what they've attracted over the last 24 hours to make this a continuous pillar in their communications rather than a short lived PR tactic. The fact that they've open their website up to anyone with a twitter account would suggest they are hoping to tap into the 15 minutes of fame mindset that Andy Warhol famously proffered. Already there are a number of regular individuals who seem to be spending most of their day constantly trying to get onto the first screen so this may have legs....but only if more join in their fervor.
Sure, there are lots of discussion going on that maybe the implementation could have been better (people seem to universally think the fixed placement of the navigation widget for the site is deeply annoying) but advertisers (and agencies) all over the world are wrestling with how to 'manage' social media channels to their advantage and becoming an aggregation point for all related content, as Skittles.com has become, may well be one way forward.
Bryan
According to today's article on brand republic,
"Skittles will change the content featured on its new homepage according to what is generating a buzz at the time. For example, late last week when the site relaunched, Skittles' Wikipedia entry featured as the homepage."
http://tinyurl.com/d9mfu9
Posted by: Jack | March 03, 2009 at 02:52 PM